


Twenty Love Poems and a Song Of Despair

by Berty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Canon Divergence - The Empty Hearse, Confessions, Confused John Watson, First Time, Frottage, John is a Mess, John is a bad poet, M/M, Masturbation, Oral Sex, POV John Watson, Stream of Consciousness, Voyeur John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-14 15:56:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14139435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berty/pseuds/Berty
Summary: Of course Sherlock has already skipped ahead to the conclusion of several years of John’s soul-searching in less than ten seconds. His eyes narrow, then flick away.“Just… just tell me one thing. Is this the beginning or the end?” he asks the ceiling.





	Twenty Love Poems and a Song Of Despair

He’s been standing outside the door for what feels like hours, long enough for his feet to feel numb despite the mildness of the night air.

His mind is a mess; circling around and around.

_Please._

He can’t say for how long and doesn’t even know _why_ the word has been filling up every space inside his skull, but by now it seems to be the only one that’s there. It compels him. It moves his feet and stiffens his spine. It seems to be the one word that covers everything he needs to express. It’s concise. It’s important… No, it’s imperative.

A simple word.

So what is stopping him from just saying it?

He doesn’t knock and the door isn’t even fully closed as he pushes it open.

Sherlock must know he’s here, although he shows no sign of acknowledgement. It’s dark despite the tangerine smear of the streetlights – the bedroom window doesn’t face the street and the sodium glow is muted, but it’s enough to see the pale sprawl of his naked body, the covers kicked into a careless heap at the end of the bed. His eyes are closed; his breathing is deep and a little fast as his hand works between his spread thighs, stroking himself with desperate, deliberate intensity.

John knows why Sherlock is doing this, showing him this, and god knows he deserves it, but that doesn’t stop it from freezing him in place, eyes wide, breath stuttering into a chest that feels full of erratic heartbeat and too little air. It’s not his nakedness – their unconventional lifestyle, and Sherlock’s petulant refusal to behave like a ‘normal’ flatmate mean that John has seen more of Sherlock’s skin than he has many of his girlfriends’. No, it’s not the nakedness that surprises him but the rawness of what he’s witnessing; something so personal and intimate wielded as a weapon. Sherlock has chosen this act deliberately to speak as a metaphor for all the years that they have been dancing around this overwhelming _something_ they share. It’s meant to be shocking. It’s meant to provoke. And John recognises that he’s meant to react to Sherlock’s challenge. He just doesn’t know how.

And, despite understanding all this, he cannot stop his body from awakening. John wants so deeply, so much, he aches with it. It's not an unfamiliar sensation when John is around this man, but he rarely indulges the feeling - it's just too complicated to untangle what Sherlock _wants_ from what Sherlock _understands_. He doesn't want to take advantage of an innocent or misunderstood moment - Sherlock is made of such contradictions and John has found that his assumptions have been wrong too many times to trust his instincts when it comes to the subject of his flatmate. 

But how can he _not_ react when Sherlock’s elegant thighs twitch as he squeezes just right, when the circle of his fingers pauses at his corona before sweeping roughly over his glans in a way that makes his breath catch on a soft click at the back of his throat.

Sherlock is beautiful like this. Finally, here at the point of combustion and with mesmerising intensity, he burns and John knows that he will too if he touches him, but... _god_ , he wants to. He _wants_ to stretch out a hand and burn with him. It’s as if Sherlock has been unmasked, the facade stripped away revealing only the most honest and quintessential expression of the man – alive, unguarded, human and surprisingly vulnerable.

And angry.

It’s apparent in his every abrupt gesture, in every thrumming inch of his skin, in his blatant, intoxicating sexuality.

John is dimly aware that he should say something - apologise maybe? But none of those words are the one that is beating through him with each push of his heart. It’s in his blood, on his tongue, in the curl of his fingers. But it’s been trapped and denied for so long, he needs to choose to let it free.

Today has been a bad day. That’s not a justification but it is a reason – one of them – as to why he’s being treated to a show now. After all the times this could have happened. After all the times it didn’t. Sherlock has every right to taunt him with this, to accuse him, to confront him. And John could turn, walk away and shut the door behind him – he’s a past master at that. But he doesn’t. Not this time.

Sherlock’s breath stutters and he groans softly, his left knee bending to plant his foot on the mattress, hips pushing up now to meet his own fist. His back arches and his eyelashes flutter, his throat works and his jaw clenches. But it’s frustration, not fulfilment, John realises when he throws his other arm over his face, covering his eyes, panting into his crooked elbow as his hand slows and stops altogether.

“Isn’t this the point at which you have your identity crisis and scurry off to convince yourself that while wanting to have sex with a man is ‘ _fine, by the way_ ’, it’s only fine if it’s not...” his roughened voice cracks and he has to try again, “…not you?”

If John had been uncertain about what he meant to his friend before, there’s no denying it now; Sherlock’s misery is palpable. It’s unmistakable and suffocating in the intimacy of his darkened room. And that is more shocking than the nudity, the masturbation and every terrible thing that they have ever done to each other, however inadvertently. 

John feels his heart shatter.

This is his fault.

Someone made an off-colour joke about them at New Scotland Yard today - he only caught the end of it as he was returning with a couple of coffees –and it was nothing he hadn’t heard before, the usual insinuations and assumptions, but for some reason, today he responded.

It was Donovan and a newly promoted sergeant who Sherlock had already determined (out loud and to her face, no less) was 'trying too hard'. Maybe it was because she was pretty, maybe it was because her eyes had lingered on him a little when they’d shaken hands or maybe it was that he felt sorry for her being subjected to Britain’s least tactful man within a week of starting at the Met.

Smirking at their guilty expressions, John countered with a raised eyebrow and a glib comment.

“Not my type,” he said with a cheeky glance at Sergeant Sahai, whose first name he couldn’t even recall now. “Too high-maintenance for me.”

Sally rolled her eyes at him and Sahai looked relieved, then tipped her head.

“But you do have a type do you?” she asked. She was feisty, quick and confident and, if John wasn’t much mistaken, a little bit interested.

“Well, female to start with,” John shrugged, warming to his subject.

Sahai nodded her understanding. “Gender aside, he’s pretty easy on the eye though.”

Laughing, John brushed that off. “Is he? It’s kind of hard to see around his massive ego… sorry, I meant genius!”

She raised a sceptical eyebrow at him and John felt the beginning of a flush creep around the back of his collar. This was why he ignored this kind of comment, he remembered belatedly. He never knew whether he was giving himself away and drawing more attention to his own confusing attraction to Sherlock. He should have stopped there but apparently old habits died hard and even if he had no intention of taking it further, it was always nice to be noticed.

“What? Pretty isn't everything, you know. Pretty doesn't negate arrogance or being annoying or stunningly rude! You don’t think I can do better than a socially-challenged, lanky bastard? Even if I were gay, I’d have to be an idiot to…”

Only then did he recognise the ringing silence that followed his abandoned rant and realise that Sally’s widened eyes were focussed behind him, over his shoulder.

By the time he turned, Sherlock was gone; only a flash of his long coat trailing as he disappeared into the incident room. John glanced at Sally who was obviously torn between a wince and a smirk, and he knew that Sherlock must have heard every spiteful word of it.

Thrusting two hot paper cups into her hands and ignoring her protest, John followed.

Lestrade nodded at him, and continued talking quietly to Anderson while Sherlock stood with his back to the door, his eyes scanning a gruesome array of photos spread across the table before him – close up shots of apparently random body parts.

“Sherlock…”

“Cause of death?” he barked, his voice oddly flat, picking out one of the pile and holding it up for John’s attention. "Or post-mortem injury?"

John moved toward his friend, ignoring the photo and taking in the lack of eye contact and the rapid-fire quality of his words. Lestrade shot him a quizzical look, which John pretended not to see.

“Sherlock, I wasn’t…” John began gently, turning his face to hide it from the other men in the room, keeping his voice low and half an eye on Anderson.

Sherlock looked up and just for a second as he came to stand in front of him, John got a glimpse of the pain and confusion in his eyes. It was an expression he'd rarely, if ever, seen on the brilliant, assured man's face before, so it took John a few seconds to place it. But by the time he had, Sherlock had recovered his cool reserve. 

“Dull,” he announced, his voice more controlled now. “Although it’s statistically unlikely that anyone in Greater London has missed your informative and frequent announcements on the robustness of your heterosexuality, we can ask my brother to use his considerable resources to check later. Now, in the meantime, if you would be so kind, would you please confirm for me a cause…of…death?”

It was silent in the taxi on the way home – John in a fit of self-loathing and Sherlock… well, who knew? He took himself off immediately to his own room, and despite loitering through the evening and long into the night in hopes of catching his friend, he gave John no opportunity to make things right between them. Feeling sick and pathetic, John took himself off to bed where he laid awake for another hour or more, wondering how to...

“What do you want?” Sherlock asks, dragging John from his circling guilt. He sounds all wrong; tired and uncertain. Settling his hand across his belly, John has the distinct impression that Sherlock is holding himself so still out of years of self-discipline rather than any desire to talk with him. “What do you want? Do you even know?”

John doesn’t consciously tell his feet to bring him closer, but that’s where he is now. Looking down at Sherlock’s face, or what he can see of it; a pale eye peering out from behind his bent elbow, glittering – not with hatred or anger, but with hopelessness and resignation. He doesn’t move his arm, opting to hide most of his expression from John instead.

“Do you even _know_ , John?” 

“Please.”

At first, John believes it’s Sherlock who has spoken, but as confusion overwhelms his desire to hide and his gaze sharpens, John realises that the croaked word was his. And he can do better than that.

“Please,” he says deliberately.

Sherlock’s arm falls to his side, making him look more vulnerable than ever. He doesn’t try to cover himself and makes no concession to modesty at all. Head tipped towards John, his expression is engaged now, assessing and calculating, working probabilities and parsing complicated emotions that John had thought him incapable of recognising, let alone feeling.

Of course Sherlock has already skipped ahead to the conclusion of several years of John’s soul-searching in less than ten seconds. His eyes narrow, then flick away.

“Just… just tell me one thing. Is this the beginning or the end?” he asks the ceiling.

It doesn’t matter, either way, John thinks. Sherlock must know that there’s nowhere else for them to go. They will never be able to recapture the deniability they have hidden behind all these years. Beginning or ending, it’s here and they have to choose.

“Please.”

It seems to be the only word that John is capable of and the effort required to force it past the obstruction in his throat and make his lips shape it is exhausting. All he can see in his mind’s eye, all he’s been able to see since it happened, is the resignation on Sherlock’s face - John’s thoughtless, throwaway words still vibrating on the air between them.

In his head, John has had many names for the colour of Sherlock’s eyes; flinty, icy, stormy, arctic, wintry but they were truly none of those in that instant. Wide, deep and filled with nameless pain, they were betrayed. And John knows with utter conviction that he never wants to be the cause of that again.

It’s that certainty that has brought him here. _Finally_ here. There’s nowhere else he _can_ be – this is the right place – _his_ place - and it has been for much longer than he’s recognised.

There was always a reason why it was a bad idea. In his heart of hearts, John knew that Sherlock was in love with him, whatever that word meant to him, but he could never bring himself to believe in it… in him… strongly enough to reach for it. Fear had kept him from acting, never sure what reaction he’d get to an overt sign or word of love.

Rejection was too costly and painful a possibility – Sherlock didn’t ‘do’ sex as far as John knew, but could John live without that connection if Sherlock’s brand of love was more cerebral than full contact?

He’d acted in self-defence, John knew now. Sherlock was Sherlock, and John didn’t want to change him, but that meant accepting the flaws along with the joys, and with Sherlock those came in polar opposites –being ignored or being the sole focus of his considerable attention; being forgotten or being put above all others; there was no middle way with him. John was a quietly confident man, but Sherlock’s mercurial changes of direction had bruised him more than once. Could he endure that variability from a lover?

When John pauses to evaluate all that has passed between them in the name of their friendship, he can only speculate on what havoc they can wreak if their platonic love for each other were to become something more possessive, more physical or emotionally heightened. He refrains from using the word 'permanent' or 'meaningful', because, to his mind, their friendship is already both of those things. They have endured separation, misunderstandings, experiments, anger, insults, contempt, jealousy and regret. And yet, somehow, they manage to find their way back to each other again and again. They are irrevocably intertwined already, each with the other’s name writ large in the pages of their respective lives. And all that history they share is littered with broken promises, with white lies and omissions, with guilt and with blame. Can kisses smooth over the shattered bones of their past? Can love be strong enough to guarantee forgiveness on both sides?

Sherlock is slowly sitting up now, his gaze retargeted, but never leaving John. His eyes read, from point to point; eyes, hands, shoulders, scar, mouth, groin, solar plexus and back to his eyes.

Dimly, John realises that he’s standing here in only his boxer shorts but he doesn’t feel ashamed or discomforted by Sherlock’s sharp scrutiny. He never has. They only have one secret left between them now and John hopes that’s about to crumble too.

He’s lost count of the number of ‘pleases’ he has asked Sherlock for over the years, some out loud and some only in his mind, but John wants to put his lips to Sherlock’s skin and speak every one of them into his flesh – layer them, overlap them until they cover him completely like bandages.

No, like armour.

_Please don’t get hurt._

_Please don’t be dead._

_Please forgive me._

_Please understand me, even when I don’t understand myself._

And some of that must show because Sherlock lifts a hesitant hand and touches cautious fingers to his cheek and jaw and throat, then curl around his neck and bring his head down where he can pull his mouth in close enough to kiss. Not immediately though. He leaves a hair’s breadth between them, his eyes wide open, watching to see what John will do, waiting for a sign that this is what he wants.

What else can John do? He nudges forward and presses his lips to Sherlock’s who freezes for a second, and then parts for him with a soft breath, letting John slip the tip of his tongue along the slick silk of his lower lip. It's a rush, it's intoxicating and John wants to spend years cataloguing the differences between Sherlock's lips and the smooth heat of his tongue. But first...

He straightens up and watches, needing to know that his answer has been understood. Finally, John knows what he wants and he’s not about to change his mind anytime soon.

Sherlock licks his own lips, eyes slowly refocusing, then he reaches out and grasps John firmly around the waist, burying his face in John’s belly, tasting the angle of his hips, and holding so tight as if he might lose everything before he’s even known it was his. He nuzzles into the sparse trail of hair below John’s navel, breathing him in, smearing his open, panting mouth over John’s superheated skin and leaving trails of sensitized skin in his wake.

“Please,” John whispers one more time, threading his hands greedily through Sherlock’s raven curls. Soft. Thick. Warm. Just as he’d known they would be.

Sherlock makes a sound like a growling sob, roughly pushes John’s boxers down and takes the head of his mostly hard cock into his mouth.

Control leaves his grasp so fast he barely has the sense to stay standing, but Sherlock locks his arms behind John’s thighs and he curls down over Sherlock’s shoulders and back; cool creamy skin and shifting muscle, and the scent of him is everywhere and everything.

His mouth is soft and reverent, then questing and demanding by turns as Sherlock learns what reduces John to incoherence, what makes him gasp, what makes his toes curl and what lifts him up onto the balls of his feet.

It’s sublime. It is poetry. It is every perfect high note that Sherlock has ever played in John’s hearing. It’s the opening chord of the Bach piece he loves so much. It’s sunshine on his skin and the cool wash of deep blue shade at noon. It’s the seeping spread of a warm bath after a cold day. It’s the sweet burst of ripe peaches on his tongue and the tart creaminess of lemon gelato on his lips.

If he were cognizant, he would be embarrassed at the speed at which he spills into Sherlock’s willing mouth, but it’s all too good, and Sherlock swallows him down with little sighs of gratitude that bring tears to the corners of John’s eyes.

Guiding him down onto his bed, John lets himself be arranged, and clumsily, desperately seeks out Sherlock’s mouth again. He obliges him sweetly and John pulls at his body until it rests on top of his own. Sherlock gasps as his newly reawakened erection snugs against John’s belly and into the humid warmth between them. Almost curiously he bucks a little, settling himself more comfortably and John rests his hands on the swell of Sherlock’s arse, encouraging him to move against him.

Sherlock is tentative at first, as if unsure of his welcome but John hums and matches his rhythm until the dam breaks and Sherlock buries his face in John’s neck and takes his pleasure. He murmurs into the safety of John’s skin, incomprehensible words in a broken, breathless voice, then stills, shudders and pulses between them.

It’s quiet for a long time. They breathe themselves calm and Sherlock slumps to one side, curling himself close next to John’s body. Neither of them move to clean up – it would disturb whatever entente it is that is happening here in the darkness. Sherlock is not sleeping, John knows. He’s breathing too shallowly and there’s a taut, alert quality to his stillness.

On an impulse, John turns to press his lips against Sherlock’s forehead, breathing in the scent of his sweaty hair. And suddenly the words are there. Unleashed.

“Please don’t give up on me, Sherlock. Don’t give up on me just yet.”

Sherlock’s response is slow in coming and measured, but he spreads his palm across John’s heart and leaves it there as his body slowly relaxes, letting go of the thrumming of unexpressed, untried emotions.

It’s not a beginning; that was years ago in a lab at Bart’s. Nor an end - no one can know when that might be. This is them, and maybe it’s a new component to their eternally complicated relationship; they are old dogs and these are new tricks, and it remains to be seen how well they can learn them. But he is definitely still John Watson, doctor, soldier, and writer of a popular blog and terrible poetry, and the man at his side is the world’s only consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and they’re together in 221B Baker Street. Because that is where they belong and that is how this story will _always_ end.

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the gorgeous book by Pablo Neruda
> 
> I'm on Tumblr if you want to drop by and say hi!
> 
> https://bertytravelsfar.tumblr.com


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